ILAB has awarded a $680,000 sole source cooperative agreement to the University of Texas School of Public Health (UTSPH) to fund nationally representative surveys on the prevalence, nature, and possible effects of working conditions and health issues – including work-related violence – in six countries in Central America. As part of the “Second Working Conditions and Health Survey in Central America”, co-funded by ILAB and the department’s Chief Evaluation Office, researchers will survey men and women working in the formal and informal sectors of each country, and will conduct focus groups and publish papers based on their findings.

The data will provide much needed national-level information about highly sensitive labor topics. National working conditions surveys are not typically carried out in developing countries. This research will thus fill a large data gap for the region and, it is hoped, encourage future research of this kind. A newly developed subset of questions on work-related violence will link up with the larger survey, enabling researchers to analyze the violence findings within the broader working conditions context and providing greater insight than if these data were captured separately.

The information gathered from workers will be anonymous and will not identify specific individuals or companies. The award runs through 2019.